March 2020, COVID-19 is at its peak. The ultra-Orthodox Sasson family live in a tiny apartment in Safed, Israel and find themselves in uncharted territory – the father, Gili, has tested positive, and has infected his wife and a few of their children. The new imposed reality threatens Gili’s core ...

During the Holocaust, there was no other city in Europe where Germans, Poles and Jews lived so closely together and yet worlds apart as Lodz. Several times a day for four years, the Line 41 streetcar passed through the Lodz Ghetto, but would never stop, making the suffering of the Jewish people a...

Moshe Safdie: The Power of Architecture is a film portrait of the dynamic, Canadian-Israeli architect who first burst on the world stage while still in his twenties with the groundbreaking building, Habitat '67. It begins with Safdie's early years in Haifa, his move to Montreal at the age of 15, ...

Shmuel (Geza Rohrig, Son of Saul) a Hasidic cantor, distraught by his wife’s untimely death, struggles to find religious solace while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert (Matthew Broderick, The Producers), a community college biology ...

Two beautiful young teachers in Brooklyn - one an Orthodox Jew (actor/director Zoe Lister-Jones, "Life in Pieces") and the other a Muslim - cross boundaries and flout conventions when they forge a powerful and lasting friendship, bonding over their shared experiences of "arranged marriages" throu...

Funny, witty, bold and revealing, the creators of "Senior Moments" document intimate meetings with ten resilient elderly folks surviving old age with a vengeance. The film cohesively samples a cultural variety of personalities in modern-day Israel and provides an inspiring outlook on what it mean...

Three very different brothers – Alon (34), a no-nonsense Israeli Army officer; Benni (30), a brilliant electrician; and Idan (22), a wimpy field trip guide – must navigate a series of mistakes and mishaps in an attempt to bury their beloved grandmother in the cemetery of her kibbutz. Since winnin...

From award-winning director Eran Riklis (The Syrian Bride, Lemon Tree, Shelter) comes the story of Eyad, a Palestinian Israeli boy given the chance to go to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem. As he desperately tries to fit in with his schoolmates within Israeli society, he falls i...

Gil is the grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors, Kat the granddaughter of a Nazi officer. Through them we meet other young men and women whose grandparents were murdered or prosecuted during WWII. Many have decided to move back to Germany...but why? This revealing film explores the challenges an...

The Jewish Cardinal tells the amazing true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, who maintained his cultural identity as a Jew even after converting to Catholicism at a young age, and later joining the priesthood. Quickly rising within the ranks of the Church, Lustige...

THE SECRET is the fascinating story of Polish citizens who learn, often after living a lifetime as Christians in a Communist nation, that they are indeed of Jewish origin. Trapped between the familiar Polish world and an alien Jewish world, these “new Jews” often find themselves adrift in a count...

Set against the backdrop of the kibbutz movement's glorious 100-year history, Inventing Our Life reveals the heartbreak and hope of Israel's communal living experiment as a new generation of women and men confront an essential question: can a radically socialist institution survive a new capitali...

Legendary Israeli musician David Broza is renowned for his sharing his musical gifts with the world for over four decades. In this touching documentary film, Broza sets off to record a new album with American, Palestinian and Israeli musicians, bridging the gap between the people and defying the ...

Cleo fulfilled his dream: to leave the big city with his wife and fifteen children, to establish a family commune on a farm in Brazil. Exploring their family roots leads the children to discover their surprising heritage, which undermines the existence of the communal paradise.

WINNER, Best Edit...

Sixth grade student Ellie experiences the hardships of moving to a new country when, in sixth grade, her family moves from Israel to the United States. As she struggles to make friends and learn the language, she meets an unlikely friend in Thuy — her Vietnamese classmate who is also a recent imm...

When three siblings gather to mourn the death of their mother, they learn something very unexpected about the real identity of their father. Determined to discover the truth, the three unlikely traveling companions set off on a journey from Israel to Paris to find out more about themselves than t...

Renowned filmmaker Avi Nesher’s The Other Story tells a suspenseful, poignant, and humorous story through the eyes of two rebellious young women from two troubled families that tangle in the most unexpected ways in Jerusalem. As the characters’ warring personal convictions and intimate anxieties ...

Thomas, a young German baker, is having an affair with Oren, an Israeli married man who has frequent business visits in Berlin. When Oren dies in a car crash in Israel, Thomas travels to Jerusalem seeking for answers regarding his death. Under a fabricated identity, Thomas infiltrates into the li...

The three Darwish brothers, who immigrated from Iraq to Israel in the 50’s, established the family factory “Fantasia” - a menorah factory. For a time period of 50 years they designed, manufactured and shipped Chanukah menorahs for the entire world and now…the family factory is about to close down...

Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, both lived through and wrote about the open wounds of modern times. Her insights about the nature of evil, origins of totalitarianism and plight of refugees sound today more relevant than ever. The deep humanistic message at...

Anat (Naama Preis, winner of the Jerusalem Film Festival award for Best Actress) has never been able to reach her father’s exacting musical standards, and now her family's hope of producing a musical prodigy rests on her unborn son. When the baby is born deaf, she cannot accept it and resorts to ...

A devout woman is living with her family in the Jewish cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. During the day, while her husband and children are at school, she is left alone in the mountain. She goes for walks in the cemetery, trying to escape the endless house work.

One night, out of frustra...

As the son of the Imam of the local Brooklyn mosque, eleven year-old Daud has to juggle the high expectations of his Father (actor/comedian Maz Jobrani) and his feelings of isolation and difference– even from his peers in the Muslim community. Through an innocent act of good faith, Daud inadverte...

Ron is intelligent, charming and full of life, but every day, his movements are increasingly limited by cerebral palsy. This, while he watches his twin run and play soccer with their brother. The film follows this remarkable family’s struggles as the parents do everything in their power to raise ...

We have all heard of the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mount Meron, but many of us do not understand the appeal of the place and the meaning of the faith that causes hundreds of thousands of people to ascend to the tomb all year long. The film presents a poetic and intimate observation of th...

Winner of Five Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture! | The Human Resources Manager of Jerusalem's largest bakery is in trouble. When one of his employees, a foreign worker, is killed in a suicide bombing, the bakery is accused of indifference, and the HR Manager is sent to the victim's h...

82-year-old Elisheva Rise passed away. As her children clear out her home, they find journals she secretly wrote to each of them documenting their lives from their birth until her last day. Every evening she would sit in her kibbutz home and write to her 7 children, whom she had never hugged nor ...

On a cold winter night, estranged siblings Sarah and Aaron Cotler arrive at an empty train station in Dombrova, Poland. With their only available ride being a silent Driver, they embark on a quest to fulfill their dying grandmother’s wish – find, dig up, and bring home the bones of her favourite ...

The Muranow neighborhood in Warsaw was once a flourishing and important Jewish center - but during World War II, the neighborhood was turned into the ”Warsaw Ghetto.” Today, thousands of Polish people live in the green and spacious Muranow neighborhood, yet its dark past keeps haunting it. Polish...

Filmmaker Ori Sivan (co-creator of Israel's "In Treatment") presents a contemporary variation of the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Sarah, a harpist of the Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra is married to Abraham, its conductor. When Hagar, a young Palestinian horn player joins the orc...

With more than 700 early-stage startups, and as many as 5,000 overall, it is no surprise that Tel-Aviv has been ranked second only to Silicon Valley as a leading tech community. In SILICON WADI, we follow four Israeli startup teams for two years as they sacrifice their families, their friends, an...

This coming-of-age story evokes the offbeat charms of "Juno" and "Sixteen Candles" as it tells the story of Libby, a shy, intelligent 13-year-old in California who is sent by her mother to live with her estranged father in Israel. It doesn’t take long for the serious-minded Libby to discover her ...

The Light Rail Red Line of Jerusalem’s tramway connects the city from east to west, from the Palestinian neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina to Mount Herzl—a journey that comprises the culturally complex makeup of the city. This humorous and touching film, whose cast includes Mathieu Amalric...

On April 11, 1945 Buchenwald was liberated. Nearly 1000 boys survived. On April 11, 2010, 65 years later, several of the surviving boys from block 66 returned to Weimar and to Buchenwald. This is their story.

“This amazingly impressive film gives a really different take on a Holocaust movie.” -...

“Did Pancho Villa really try to kill my grandfather? And if so, why?”

In unraveling this mystery, filmmaker Stacey Ravel Abarbanel delves into memory, history, and contemporary life in the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, famed for being raided in 1916 by Villa’s army during the Mexican Revo...

This is the story of 3 ex-pilots and a navigator, all in their eighties, who in their youth embodied the perfect image of the "model Israeli Tsabar". The four decide to come clean about their true identities as holocaust survivors and venture out on a journey throughout their lost childhoods, the...

Michael Aloni (Shtisel), August Diehl (A Hidden Life, Inglourious Basterds) and Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049) star in the thrilling English-language drama PLAN A, based on the incredible true story of the "Avengers“ - a group of Jewish vigilantes, men and women, who after surviving the Holocau...

Award-winning filmmaker Amos Gitai returns to the West Bank to better understand the efforts of the citizens, both Israelis and Palestinians, to try to overcome the consequences of the 50-year occupation. Gitai's documentary intersperses footage of his interviews with Yitzhak Rabin from the 1990s...

Based on director Amos Gitai’s experiences in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, this story is told from the perspective of a young Israeli student who has been instructed to join a special military unit on the Golan Heights shortly after the fighting begins — as he and his helicopter crew embark on danger...

Set seven days before the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948, a small rusted ship carrying a group of concentration camp survivors is met in Palestine by aggressive British troops. Tired and hungry, the hopeful immigrants must immediately take up arms against the Arabs. They thought they...

Every week, 10 elderly gay men gather in a room lit by neon lights at the LGBT Center of Tel-Aviv. Being part of a community that sanctifies youth, this intimate space is these old gays' last and only shelter, where they can age and deal with aging openly: from sexuality and body image at old age...

17-year-old Tal has emigrated from France to Jerusalem with her family. She writes a letter expressing her refusal to accept that only hatred can reign between Israelis and Palestinians. She slips the letter into a bottle, and her brother throws it into the sea near Gaza, where he is carrying out...

Amos Gitai's KADOSH takes viewers inside the Mea Sherim quarter of Jerusalem, an enclave of the ultra-Orthodox almost never seen on the screen. Here, for ten years, the pious Rivka (Yael Abecassis, "Live and Become") has devoted herself to her husband Meir (Yoram Hattab), but their marriage remai...

Frankfurt, 1946. David Bermann (Moritz Bleibtreu, "Run Lola Run") and his Jewish friends have escaped the Nazi regime and are now dreaming of leaving for America. But how will they get the money in these tough post-war times? The smooth-talking businessman focuses on what the Germans now need mos...

Rebecca (Natalie Portman), an American who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months now, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna (Hanna Laslo), an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large sum of money that "the American"...

During 50 years of writing, Ephraim Kishon sold millions of books and won two Golden Globes, yet he could never write his own biography. At the age of 70 he invited journalist Yaron London to assist him. KISHON uses animation to 'bring back to life' Kishon's persona and reenact the rare dialog.

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Dana and Amit got to know each other at the age of 25. Two years later, they got married. Shortly before the birth of their second child, Amit becomes ultra-Orthodox, while Dana remains secular. Can their love overcome the growing gap between their ways of life?

Directed by David Ofek & Neta Sho...

Directed by the grandson of Nathan Handwerker, founder of iconic Brooklyn institution Nathan’s Famous, over a 30-year period, FAMOUS NATHAN details Nathan's upbringing in a poor village in Poland, emigration to New York, and the creating and running of Coney Island's premier hot dog stand for ove...

Exclusively for ChaiFlicks subscribers! | Filmmaker and Holocaust scholar Boaz Dvir is the Director of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative and the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State University. Using the ChaiFlicks series ANTI-SEMITISM: 2000 YEARS OF HI...

Haim Hatuel started piercing his kids at the age of 5. Today, they are Israeli fencing champions. After his release from the army, Haim joined a fencing academy aimed at turning street kids into law abiding citizens. Over the next 45 years, Haim has built a fencing empire in Acre - but just befo...

During World War II, Eva lost her daughter and her baby granddaughter, Sarah, along with the rest of her family during a raid After the war, Eva worked to rebuild her life, becoming a Jewish literature teacher at a high school in Bordeaux, France. One day, Eva recognizes that her student's father...

A 2022 Emmy winner for Best Historical Documentary, this is the true story of the Neiger family's miraculous escape from certain death by the Nazis during World War II. A story of endurance, unity and hope.

Directed by John Rokosny
United States, 2021
Documentary
English
73 minutes

Lior Ashkenazi ("Foxtrot", "Late Marriage") stars in DEAR GOD, which depicts romantic Jerusalem seen through the eyes of Aaron, a guard at the Wailing Wall. One day, a beautiful mysterious woman puts a note between the holy stones and Aaron decides to fulfill her deepest wish, while learning that...

In the late 1970's, after thousands of years of praying and longing for Jerusalem, the first Ethiopian Jews arrived in Israel. Was it worth it? in this film the question is posed for the first time to the children of Ethiopian Jews. Their parents tell stories of immense bravery, and of incredible...

In this hilarious comedy of hair-brained disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert (Louis de Funès), a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab revolutionary. The two dress up as Hasidic Jews in order to evade the police and a band of assass...

Filmmakers Terri and Paul Bachow tell the stories of four survivors who lived outside of the concentration camps during the Holocaust. They describe how lucky you had to be to survive. To survive you had to be lucky at least ten times, although often what turns out to have been lucky was often a ...

The story of the pork industry in Israel, an industry that has raised ethnic tensions and heated struggles over the country's short history. Sitting firmly between Israel's most essential identity issues and the fundamental right to freedom of choice, how did the unsuspecting pig turn into such a...

Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943) was a prolific Warsaw-based artist who painted scenes of the Polish-Jewish community until he was murdered at Majdanek concentration camp. For more than a decade his great-granddaughter Elizabeth searched for his missing art, with remarkable and unexpected success. Spann...

Three children from the West Bank are smuggled into Israel, arriving at the doorstep of George and Rita's house in Jaffa, who disagree about how to respond to their arrival. Their mother is dead, and their father has been sentenced for life. George is afraid that hiding the children will endanger...

Patrick Bruel (Sabrina, Paris-Manhattan) stars in this heartwarming adaptation of Joseph Joffo’s enduring memoir which tells the story of the Nazi occupation through the eyes of two young Jewish brothers in German occupied France who, with a mind-boggling mix of mischievousness, courage and inge...